Philosophy Meets Crypto Feat. Stanford Blockchain Club

This is the PoolTogether Community Podcast. PoolTogether is the world's number one no-loss prize savings account. You can visit pooltogether.com to deposit. You're listening to the PoolTogether Community Podcast. And I'm your host, Millie Yearley, AKA Tim, AKA Hot Mike. AKA, don't ask me how many cats I have. And I'm here with Jay from the Stanford Blockchain Club. Thanks for being here, man.

Yeah, thanks for having me, Millie.

Awesome. Very cool. Very cool. Yeah. So tell me about how you got into crypto, like we always do on the podcast. And, and then I would love to know how you got involved with the Blockchain Club.

Yeah, for sure. So I'm Jay. I'm Vice President of Stanford Blockchain Club. And basically, so I basically got into crypto about like a year and a bit ago when I was working on my own projects. How do you actually use like a Web3 way to do digital publishing and create like a digital publishing house? So at Stanford, I'm actually a double major in computer science and philosophy. So I write a lot. I'm very interested in digital publishing and kind of like that content creation. I've done a couple of blogs before, gotten like about 10,000 followers. But the problem with all of that is that like, it's very hard to monetize as a creator. And even if you do monetize, a lot of the times the platform is going to take a lot of that. So I got into Web3 wanting to see if there were kind of Web3 mechanisms, whether that was through NFTs, whether that was through these other tokenization methods to actually allow me as a content creator in order to basically have a better earning and kind of have more custody over my own work. So I built my own project. It was like a Web3 publishing house backed by DSA, kind of like Mirror.xyz, but it was, but like with like a content moderation mechanism. But eventually I ended up like sunsetting that at the end of like last summer, just because the macro was souring and it was really hard to like build a community. I started just writing more about Web3 freelance, and then some of that got picked up by a couple of VCs who were like, oh, hey, do you wanna just start writing content for us? So I started getting into kind of like the kind of like the venture part of the space. And this summer, right now I'm at Pantera Capital. So yeah, at Stanford I mainly lead the research and content arm. So my big project has been the Stanford Blockchain Review, which is kind of like an industry magazine. So we collaborate with a lot of these research partners throughout industry, top protocols. So we collaborated with The Graph before and basically let like these protocols and also write about what they're interested in and what kind of excites them within the space at this moment. So kind of like a pulse check of the industry. Yeah. So super excited to chat anything that like derives from that. I mean, I can talk also a little bit about Standard Blockchain because you guys want to hear about that.

Yeah, I would love to. I would love to hear about that. Just like, what does VP mean? What are your responsibilities? That kind of, just some insights into the club.

Yeah, for sure. So we do quite a lot of stuff at the club. We have quite a few like verticals. So that includes like events, that includes research. We run actually like a Web3 entrepreneurship seminar as well, twice a year. So there's like that education part as well. So, and then we have the accelerator. So my own vertical that I'm mainly leading is research. I'm deliverable on that is basically our magazine. We'll— I also look at some of the governance stuff as well. We have governance for Uniswap. So that's how the club is generally structured. Our president Sophie is mainly looking at like event sort of things. And then we also have our treasurer and then we also have our accelerator president as well. So those are kind of like the different arms. I think as like a student group, Stanford Blockchain Club does like quite a lot of things. So yeah. But we're like a surprisingly small student group.

But you have like a whole blockchain week coming up next week. So what does that look like? What is it? What does that— what's your role with that?

Yeah. So basically for that, it mainly revolves around the Science of Blockchain conference, which is one of the top blockchain academic conferences basically in the world. It's run by Professor Dan Boneh's lab. It's a very prestigious conference. So this year, what we at Stanford Blockchain Club is doing as like a new thing is to— we're creating a pre-conference. So we're creating a pre-conference called BAS, or the Blockchain Applications Stanford Summit, so in which we're highlighting kind of more of the entrepreneurial, more of the industry, more of like the Stanford ecosystem side of things, as opposed to like the very rigorous academic conference that like Al, like that basically the professors are organizing, because we hope to bring more of the community around Stanford while also showcasing some of like the highlights of our ecosystem, including top startups at our accelerator, as well as some of these like large protocols as well. So we're gearing up for like Stanford Blockchain Week. There's also a bunch of other side conferences. There's, for example, the StarkNet conference. There is some stuff going on at Berkeley and some other stuff. So we're all wrapping these all together and bringing everyone together for like an entire week of events called Stanford Blockchain Week. So we're super excited for that. Me personally, I'm going to be running around or doing a lot of the on-day stuff, helping out logistics. It's the whole event organizing spiel. But yeah, super excited to see a lot of friends there.

Okay, so you're a student, you're an intern at a VC firm, you are running this, you're helping to run this club with the events and stuff, and you're writing a ton, right? So you're double majoring. So one major wasn't enough for you. You got a minor in French and you're cranking out the articles for different things personally and that sort of thing. So couple questions. One, what is this fishy? You have like fishy on-chain, fishy philosophy kind of theme. So I want to know about that. And 2, where do you find the time of the day?

Oh, I guess like the fishy one is very interesting because so my surname Yu in Chinese is actually like a homonym for fish. So that's kind of like where the fish part comes in. And I really like the idea of everything being very fishy because as like a philosophy major, I'm very skeptical about a lot of things, stuff like that. So I don't really think for a lot of things you can have concrete arguments. So a lot of this stuff is all very fishy in the sense that something seems fishy. And that's especially true, I think, for the crypto space. And that's why I took that as kind of like my personal signature type of thing. And then combining it with like, you know, I could not resist the pun on like philosopher. So, so it's like fishy philosopher. That's kind of like why that's been like my personal brand thing.

That's right. So, so does that mean that you focus mostly on, are you mostly interested in epistemology? Like how do we know things? You know, because of like what you just said is like things are fishy. Like how can you actually know, or you're skeptical on things. So is that, is that the bent that you go? Yeah.

Kind of, I would say yes and no. My special focus is more on philosophy of language, actually. So I do a lot of stuff on Wittgenstein and especially on some of Wittgenstein's later writings about how the meaning of language lies in its use, stuff like that. So I look more on that side of things as well as its connection with literature. How do you actually, how does a piece of literature, for example, try to present the world? present like an experience that's something that does not actually exist in the world. If you look at a Harry Potter novel or something, how does J.K. Rowling actually portray an entire world through language and how are we able to receive that? That's kind of like my focus on philosophy. So yeah, it's kind of separate. It's kind of separate from crypto. But I guess the thing with crypto is that I feel like it's actually a very ideologically driven space. And that's something that I've came to realize the more that I've been in the space is actually a lot of the ideological side of things about how do you actually realign incentives to make sure that, for example, creators get what they actually deserve? And as well as like, how do you ensure data permanence? And what is— there's like a lot of philosophical implications behind that. If you look at the logic, the entire like network state idea, right? So that's also been kind of like one thing that's kept me within the space. I would say.

So then you're also doing research, right? So with this internship, it's basically like a research role. Is that accurate?

Yeah, there's a lot of research stuff that we do, whether that's internal memos and stuff like that, or kind of external public-facing content. I think a lot of it overlaps with what I've been doing beforehand. For example, in the Stanford Blockchain Review, it's very much like a very similar process. I'm very used to that. And for me, I feel like writing and output is a way for me to actually learn and grow within the space myself. And I think that's a very valuable part and one of the drivers as to why I want to use writing as a way of, I kind of like my niche into the space. I guess going back, this kind of also leads back to, look, how do I manage all of my time given all of the different hats that I wear? It's kind of just finding these sorts of overlaps. that you can actually snowball in. For example, if I'm researching a certain space, a certain vertical in crypto, I could use that, write some memos. I could use that to write a content piece. I can also use that to invite some speakers, do some interviews, et cetera, et cetera. It goes along the big theme and they all kind of coalesce with each other to form a bigger narrative for me. And that, I think, is how I managed to jump around.

That's really great. But inevitably, though, you're going to be pulled by something, right? So something's going to priority. And then, you know, so, so like you could be doing research, right? But then like really you're intrigued about the philosophical, you want to go more philosophy, whereas like the thing that's paying the bills might be the research, you know? So how do you balance that as a student? I mean, you're an undergrad student, right? So you're like, you got your future, you got, you got your, you got everything in front of you. And then it's just like, okay, how do you prioritize? And how do you— I like, I love the batching and the stacking of passion and what you're doing and like being able to kind of optimize that. But inevitably, I think something's going to pull you. And then how do you respond to that? Do you have to like, oh no, I got to keep everything balanced? Or are you going to go get your PhD and be in academia? What do you think?

I think for me, there's a couple of things. First of all, the whole balancing, all that stuff, I think that's very true, especially for Stanford students, because I think Stanford is probably one of the schools that's most boiled with opportunity just because you're surrounded by so much money and so many success stories in Silicon Valley. You're pulled within that direction. So a lot of the Stanford kids end up doing a lot of entrepreneurship stuff. I mean, myself included. I came in as a philosophy major, but I gradually more leaned in towards the other side. I guess what has drawn me to more of the VC research type of thing, as well as the stuff that I've been doing, experimenting with Web3 and digital publishing, it's kind of like, I think it's kind of like a middle ground between what I'm really interested in versus what's going to be paying the bills. And I'm very happy that as a rising junior, I found kind of like that space for myself, which is kind of also the reason why I know that after college and stuff, most likely going to be staying in the space, either working on a project or working at venture. So, yeah, I think in the long run, I've thought about doing academia and all of that stuff. But the problem is I feel like if I'm still in my early 20s and stuff like that, I want to, when I still have the energy, to be exploring a space like crypto, which is so up and coming and there's so much to do and you can never really get tired of the space. And maybe once, maybe in the future, I might reconsider if I want to do like a PhD in philosophy or stuff like that. But again, those are not my immediate concerns right now. So that's kind of like where my head is at with like kind of balancing interests and kind of like more career type of stuff.

There's actually a class that I think you're probably, you were required to take called Designing Your Life. Dave Evans does that at Stanford. Did you have to take that?

I don't think we had to. It might be one of the freshman programs, but I took a special program called Education as Self-Fashioning. It was kind of similar in the sense that it was kind of like a writing seminar, and one was philosophy, and it's kind of like, how do you— what is the purpose of your education? How do you actually grow yourself through the Stanford education? I think Stanford's pretty good in having these sorts of classes. And they're, yeah, they're basically, they're required. There's like a lot of different flavors and a lot of specific classes that you can choose from, but the fact that you have this requirement, I think it's a really good thing.

Yeah. So this Designing Your Life course, it's also a book and they have like Designing Your Career, like it's turned into a series and stuff, but it explores like that you are a multitude of worlds that you could do 20,000 things, but yet you only need, you really get to pick a subset of that, of all the things that you could possibly do. And like, I remember like sitting in, I was getting my haircut and my barber, she was just like so freaking funny. And I was like, I was like, you should totally be a standup comic. And she's like, no, I really like cutting hair. And I was, and it's just like, of course, of course. You know, like there's all these things you could do. And, and for me personally, I feel like guilty for not doing those things, but I know that time and place and circumstance, I'm in the place I'm doing the thing that I'm doing now. And that's how things have happened for me. And yet I could be doing something else, but that's not how it has actually happened. So anyway, but I just find it funny that that came up in my head of like, oh yeah, Dave Evans, Designing Your Life. That was at Stanford. Anyway, but you're like the case study, Jay. You can do philosophy. Like in philosophy is really tempting. Like academia really, I just love the idea of like sitting around and researching and talking about stuff and like working out these huge ultimate questions. Right. Like especially philosophy, they're so snobby that they think they're like better than science and stuff, you know?

Yeah, for sure. That's definitely true. I mean, I feel like the cool thing about philosophy is that it's one of those things where whichever sector that you end up in, eventually it all goes— eventually, if you keep on asking all the why questions, it becomes a philosophical thing. And I feel like it's a very natural question to ask, especially these sour thoughts and late night insomnia kind of thoughts. It's very natural. As for the whole science and stuff like that, in the end, I do feel like a lot of this stuff is derived from philosophy. And sure, there's a lot of— most analytical philosophy right now is pivoting back towards logic and doing a lot of the math stuff. I personally am not necessarily the biggest fan of that. I think that it should be asking more of the actual fundamental questions and actually help us Going to live better lives. But yeah, that's just— yeah, sorry, that was kind of like a riff.

No, that's what we're all about here, Jay. We riff, we riff, baby. Because you just said that and I'm like, well, the thing about asking the tough questions and the big questions is it prevents building sometimes, right? And especially with this race with AI, like every— who can build the biggest, fastest, smartest, going to kill us all first because it's also going to make you a whole ton of money. So you gotta be first to the market with it, first mover. And then it's like, well, but actually we should stop and talk about this for a second, but, oh, we can't because the genie's already outta the bottle. So anyways, I also wanna, like, Jay, you laughed, but the listener doesn't know that Taliskai and Darby are both philosophy majors as well. And they were offended by my comment about how philosophy thinks it's better than science, but it totally does. So, and then Taliskai is also pointing out that we're talking very, we're getting a little stoic here.

I would say that like, no, philosophy, definitely there is some sort of, there is some like Freudian thing there going on. But I mean, for me, my focus is more on like more of the modern stuff though. So I mean, I look at Nietzsche, Aristotle, Heidegger, I'm sorry, not Aristotle, Nietzsche, Einstein, stuff like that. So more on the modern side of things. Of course, there's a lot of Aristotle written through all of those thinkers, but yeah, that's more of my focus there. Yeah, but I think it's just something that's very useful in life. And I think through having that kind of in mind, you have something to guide you that's more than just the goals or the social expectations that society sets. You have some more of an inner driver. It's not like you're just doing it for social reputation or for fame or stuff like that. And that's kind of like, So for me, it's almost like an anchoring point in the long run. And that's what's most valuable for me about philosophy.

Yeah. One thing that helped me when I was transitioning, I was doing nonprofit marketing, and then I started getting into crypto because COVID hit. There were layoffs. I got laid off, and it was just like, what do I do with my life? And I had a career coach who really encouraged me to embrace the ADD. that I actually have and the multiple things that I'm interested in and try to synthesize, you know, a career based on, you know, talents that I have. And even though I didn't necessarily see a job right in front of me that I could go apply for on LinkedIn, that, you know, it's okay to have a couple of different jobs, one in one area of interest, one in another. And so it's really cool to see you, Jay, doing this. And then also it reminds me like liberal arts education is kind of like that, like a, A smattering of things actually really helps you be a well-rounded individual. And you being at Stanford, which is, you know, and then doing the computer stuff and doing the philosophy stuff and seeing how you can wrap all of that in. Whereas like somebody who might be like at a purely philosophy of a philosophical school where it's like, no, you got to do pure philo. Anyways, it's cool to see the synthesis and the more that we're, you know, an internet society, a global society. That's just more and more important. So kudos to you, man.

Yeah, thank you. I guess the thing with Stanford, it's known for being a tech school. It's known for having a very strong STEM program. It's kind of like get rich, you, where you just basically drop out, create a startup, get like a hit gold, and then just retire. But I feel like the thing with Stanford is that the humanities program here is actually very underrated, and there's a lot of resources here. You're able to have a lot more interesting conversations with these humanities professors in these classes where there's one, less people, and two, the professor is a lot more willing to talk to you about things that are outside the syllabus and just general life advice and stuff like that. And that's why I would say that my experience at Stanford studying humanities has actually been a lot better than my experience studying STEM classes. Even as White 7 is known for being like a STEM school. Yeah,

that's really great. That's, that's cool. I could talk about this all day, but I would love to— oh, and so Taliskai appreciates the social commentary that we're driving towards multidisciplinary interests where those that can merge disparate interests leads to success. Yes, I love to believe that being a connector is like super huge. I also was at a memorial service for a friend yesterday, and people were not in crypto at all. And so whenever I have conversations with people who aren't in crypto, they always ask me about what should I invest in? And I'm like, don't ask me. I build stuff. I don't really invest. But then the other thing was, we just started talking about— they're like, so where do you think we're going? And I said this yesterday. I don't know if it was just the vibes, but I was like, I don't think we're going to have currency in 20 years. I actually don't think that we're going to use money anymore. It's very Star Trek: Next Generation. But anyways, all that to say, Jay, you're the researcher. Where do you see us going in crypto? What's the macro? I love how you said the macro is souring. I'm totally going to use that in conversation this week. But where do you see things going for us, oh researcher?

It's a very exciting time because we're right— I feel like it's very obvious now that we're seeing the end of the crypto winter and kind of like the first seeds of spring are coming along. People are looking at the next halving and stuff like that. I mean, one of the things that I've been looking at recently is kind of like a revival in the whole Bitcoin ecosystem, whether that's through Ordinals or more of talk about building layer 2s on top of Bitcoin and all of that stuff. To me, that's very interesting because of just how much name ID that Bitcoin as an ecosystem, just as a thing has. And when a lot of people think about crypto, think about Web3, the first thing that they think of is Bitcoin. So if you can unleash kind of, if you can kind of turn that potential into just a tiny bit of liquidity or a tiny bit of volume, that upside there is really insane. Again, I'm speaking with my venture mindset there, but that's a space that I've been paying quite close attention to because I think it's going to be a very interesting space for the next 3 to 6 months. Sorry, not 6 to 12 months, actually. That's one. Another very interesting one that I think is going to be relevant to a lot of people's everyday lives is the whole idea of social applications and how kind of like Web3 is moving away from just disrupting finance into disrupting kind of like social media applications as well and how we interact with others. You're beginning to see this with decentralized social graphs, stuff like Lens, Blockbuster, CyberConnect, stuff like that, as well as this new generation of social media pop-up that makes use of these social graphs and kind of like Web3 kind of ideas. I've been looking a bit at stuff like CoLab and this type of stuff. So this consumer-facing stuff, I think, is going to be a big driver within the next 12 months as well. But one thing that still needs to be improved upon a lot is the fact that Web3 has an education problem in that it's very hard to get someone who's like non-crypto native and turn them into someone that's crypto native. That's a process that takes quite a long time and a lot of effort. And a lot of self-motivation and stuff like that. So the question is, how do we implement abstraction to the point where, for example, decentralized social, Web3 social becomes something that's only social and not, you don't have to qualify it by saying that it's decentralized social, Web3 social. That's a very big question. And I think actually AI is going to play a big role in that because one of the good things about AI is it kind of acts as kind of like a flattener in a sense. Yeah. In that it flattens out these informational asymmetries because it's able to explain something like, you know, if you look at the bytecode on Etherscan or stuff like that, and then you run like an AI engine on top of it, you're able to turn that into a human-readable form. That's the thing that like GPT and all these like advanced LLMs are really, really good at. And so I'm very looking forward on seeing how AI is going to be used in order to reduce Web3's kind of like educational barriers, as well as kind of like barriers to use. And how that will actually enable a whole new kind of set of, you know, ways that we actually interact online. Yeah.

I think when you talk about AI, one of the things that I really want AI to do is do the stuff I don't want to do, fill out a profile or, you know, like any, any sort of like user action that's, that is already on-chain. Yeah. Do my taxes, change the tax code, you know, any, anything that basically like that we want users to do. I think AI could probably do better, faster, and not make that the engagement metric. So anyways, I've been thinking about that, but also like making, making connections and associations. When I open up my Converse app to do Web3 messaging via XMTP, it suggests people to message that have the same POAPs as me, have I've transacted with on-chain, which is really cool. But then there's this whole host of off-chain data that you can also incorporate. So basically, I think that in this new era or this era that we're in, we're building, building, building, right? It's bear. It's the bear. Everybody says that we're seeing the light at the end of the tunnel, which the more times people say that, I'm like, no, we're still not out of the bear yet. But I feel like we're still going wide. We're still like in the pre-internet, we're in like the AOL days of like, what else can we do? But we're also trying to Web2 app it as well. And so I feel like there needs to be like this like tightening. in this laser beaming of like, no, these are the suite of killer apps that we're focusing on, maybe. I don't know. But at ETHCC, I heard over and over again, the infra is there. We've got all the infra we need. Now let's build apps. And then now post-ETHCC, it's like, no, maybe that's not the case. Maybe that's not the case.

Yeah, I think the problem again is how do you drive the narrative back? I think it's not necessarily apps per se, but kind of like more— a lot of what actually intrigues people and actually onboards people into crypto in the first place is they hear about it from other people. I mean, of course, numbers go up, people get interested. A lot of it's actually to do with media and how do you market it out to the audience? And also how do you reduce that barrier of entry to the point where it's like the educational cost of Entering into, entering into crypto is not actually that high. So those, I think, are going to be very important. Of course, apps are going to play a big role in that because a lot of the times, if you open, like, if you think about something like StepN in the last cycle, it was like a way that really was able to onboard a lot of new people. It was basically the killer app of like the last cycle. Unfortunately, it is no longer the killer app of— yeah. But at its peak, of course, it was something, it was a very simple concept and it's very like You can walk and then earn money. It's a very intuitive appeal to people. So I think to build these successful apps, you have to turn it into a short one-sentence description. And it's like, oh, for example, CoApp is like a great example of this. For example, you can let all of your event tickets stay on-chain forever. So stuff like this. And then you integrate a novel social experience. It's the creations. of new social experiences rather than on-chain for on-chain's sake, I think, or financialization for financialization's sake. I think that's like a big misconception within the industry, within the crypto industry as well, because a lot of the times when you talk about Web3 social, Web3 gaming, you say something like GameFi or SocialFi, you always add in the whatever fi on the end. But I believe that it's not necessarily the financialization that's going to be the biggest draw, but the creation of new experiences. Perhaps tokenization or financialization is maybe one way that you can do that. For example, if you look at Friends.tech, right, through basically tokenizing all of these influencer shares, you're able to create a new form of access or a new form of social experience. But I think it's these sorts of things that are going to be the enablers of new experiences. It's not the financialization itself that's the important part.

No, that's really good. I appreciate it. You're such a writer. I love how you're forming your thoughts and how you're communicating them. I love that you brought up Friend.Tech, which is the financialization of friends, but it's so funny to see, basically no one was posting anything on the app, and I'm just like, you know what? I'm going to sell all my shares in everybody, except for Darby, of course, because Darby gave me the invite and we're locked in. Darby's mooning. I know it. Mooning, not even financially, just Anyway, but you know what I'm saying. So, so, but I got all these messages of people who are like, WTF, man, why'd you sell my shares? How dare you? Like, it was like this personal thing. And I'm like, well, you're not using it, you're not posting it. I'm not gonna, you know, I'm not gonna stick around. And now I'm not gonna go back, buy back in because you're too expensive now. So it's just really interesting to see that kind of thing happen as well as Base's on-chain summer stuff. In Coinbase, Brian Armstrong coming out and saying like, hey, we have not figured out any of these bridging modal, like, like all of these UX stuff. It's just like Coinbase is like the pinnacle of crypto and user experience. And yet like Base and Onchain Summer, it's, it's difficult, right? I think it's great because I use the rest of crypto and it's, and it's garbage. You know, a lot of UX and— Crypto is garbage. But even Coinbase comes out and says, hey, we're nowhere near ready. We've got our employees dogfooding this stuff, getting frustrated with it, logging all of the issues. So yeah, it's really cool to see that, but I do agree. It's the mix of on-chain, off-chain, the mix of Web2 and Web3 to create these new interesting products that are also decentralized and also have these other advantages that we hold so dear in crypto.

Yeah, I think that's definitely true. I think, for example, Web3 native social is obviously not mature yet. Otherwise, we would not be hosting this podcast on Discord, right? And so much would not be happening on Discord, Telegram, Twitter, all of these very Web2 type of applications. At the same time, it's very interesting to see how some of these applications are trying to pivot towards or incorporate some sort of Web3 element to it. I've been looking recently at, for example, Reddit moons. Of course, following their recent listing, they literally have been mooning. It's a very— it's like, how do you actually bootstrap off of a Web2 social network and through that kind of add-on, say, like tokenization or some incentive mechanism, and then turn it into something that is Web3? I think that's going to be a very important path going forward. And so how do you basically leverage platforms that people are already familiar with, whether that's like Reddit or Instagram, stuff like that, and then build more enhanced functionality that you couldn't have with just Web2 on top of it? But again, the key question that I'm looking at is, does this actually create a new form of crypto experience? If it doesn't, then just on-chain for on-chain's sake is not going to be a compelling It's not going to be a compelling reason for Web3 social app or stuff to just leapfrog.

Okay, so you said the O word, you said Ordinals, and we have actually never talked about Ordinals on the pod, but I'm a Wasi. I'm in the Wasi community as well, and there's a whole obsession with Ordinals and BRC-20s. And so you being the first guest that has actually talked about this, as a thing that people should be paying attention to. Can you just kind of give me the case for Ordinals and ways that the Pull Together community could engage with Ordinals?

I've opened Pandora's box here, unfortunately. But I think just from a macroscopic perspective, it's like Bitcoin is the most decentralized, it's the most well-known blockchain that there is out there. It's the most liquid coin. There's so much stuff going on there. But even though it's got the most name ID and stuff, all of the innovation and all of that, all of the true smart contracts and all of that happens within the Ethereum ecosystem. So how do we actually port all of that back onto Bitcoin and to actually leverage Bitcoin utility and stuff like that to create a very native DeFi ecosystem? That for me is a very exciting prospect. And I think Ordinals plays like a very big role in that by just like reducing the amount of like, you know, by abstracting away all the like the nasty technical implementations that like Bitcoin's UTXO model kind of brings there and allowing things to be a lot simpler. To some extent, like Stacks and Lightning also do that, but I think it's just like abstracting away all the technical details. And then allowing people to build these upper level kind of new ways of transacting value or new ways of new ecosystems, whether that's through NFTs or through DeFi and stuff like that on the Bitcoin ecosystem. I think it's going to be a very compelling narrative going forward, and that's definitely a space that I'm really looking right now.

So is there like a certain— good.

we've already seen kind of like the success story with Ethereum in that you see the DeFi ecosystem, NFT ecosystem kind of like blooming. So if you think of that as kind of like you can basically just replicate, I think it's not a stretch of imagination to basically replicate that on Bitcoin and have an ecosystem that is basically on the same scale as Ethereum there.

Yeah. So what I was going to ask is, is there like a site or a place or a thing? Like somebody get like onchain somewhere.xyz is like a really great Base bridging, something you can do on Base immediately. So is there something that's similar for Ordinals?

I don't actually, I'm not actually that, I don't actually know. I mean, like, there's like a lot of like, I'm not familiar with like Ordinals, like it's like the stuff itself. I'm just like talking more just like as like a space in general. Yeah. Yeah. I think just like looking at some of like the, for example, like some of like the NFTs marketplaces, like I know that Magic Eden has like a big like Ordinals thing. So I think stuff like that will be really interesting to just look at as like a first step. Yeah.

Yeah. Magic Eden sounds great. Yeah, cool.

I'm not super familiar with the actual intricate details of the Ordinals stuff, but yeah, it's definitely like the overall space is very exciting.

Gotcha. Gotcha. Okay, well, let's wrap it up here, Jay. I want to see if you had anything else you wanted to talk about or promote before we sign off.

Yeah, I think like if you guys are, if you guys like what we're doing at Stanford Blockchain Club, feel free to support us at Stanford Blockchain Week. That's August 26th to 31st on Stanford campus. And also, I mean, I run the, I'm partial to the Stanford Blockchain Review. You can find it's like review.stanfordblockchain.xyz. We publish stuff with like the Graph Explorer. I recently just released an interview that I did with Ronnie from, you know, Aave and Lens on basically how Lens was, you know, pioneering like new forms of like social experience. So feel free to check that out. That's just like my obligatory like advertisement there. But yeah.

Awesome. Well, Jay, thanks so much. Thanks for joining us. Appreciate it. Thanks for dropping the link. review.stanfordblockchain.xyz is the newsletter. This looks awesome. Cool, man.

All right. Thank you for having me. It was a great pleasure talking to you. Yeah, it was

awesome. I love talking philosophy and, you know, learning a little bit about Ordinals. Thanks, Tal Sky, Darby.

Thanks for listening to the PoolTogether Community Podcast.

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